Is the Internet Emptying Your Mind? - New Evidence of Brain Drain taking place

Is the Internet Emptying Your Mind? - New Evidence of Brain Drain taking place

This is a discussion on Is the Internet Emptying Your Mind? - New Evidence of Brain Drain taking place within the Off Topic & Humor Discussion forums, part of the The Back Porch category; Is the Internet causing your mind to become more feeble? Can you no longer remember things as well as you used to?
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Theoretically, at some point in time, a chip can be implanted in our heads that will replace current computers. You will be able to instantly have all the answers by simply thinking of the question. Google will for the most part replace public education and colleges as we know it today. There will be some fringe liberal arts colleges that will teach people to think for themselves, but most people will be satisfied with just having an answer for everything without having to think about it all that much.

"Historical examination of the right to bear arms, from English antecedents to the drafting of the Second Amendment, bears proof that the right to bear arms has consistently been, and should still be, construed as an individual right." -- U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings, Re: U.S. vs Emerson (1999)

I look at this from another viewpoint. Your brain can only remember so much data, and we tend to specialize in certain knowledge. Being able to offload knowledge to other people or technology allows us to get better at what we specialize in. For instance, in IT, I find people who remember all the answers to problems tend to be horrible at troubleshooting new problems and can't seem to search for new solutions. On the flip side, those that don't try to remember every detail tend to be rock stars on the day to day job and can adapt quickly by using tools like google to figure out the rest.

It used to be that we collected reference books to help us out, so the downside I see is that when we loose access to the Internet we are suddenly incapable of looking things up we have not committed to memory. That's why I believe that it's important to keep real printed books around to augment what you need to know when faced with an emergency and the power is out.

Maybe, maybe not. I know I've learned far more from the internet than I ever would have without the internet. As far as remembering smaller things, sure, we don't. But then again, as mentioned above, that may just be a side effect of specialization.

Take engineers for example. They don't know everything. A lot of what they do is research. That is ok. No human can retain all the information that our race as a whole generates.

In other words, this may not be so much of a "dumbing down" as simply a fundamental shift in the way we use our brains. I'm sure the ancients would bemoan that we no longer have a rich oral storytelling tradition. But we have other things they didn't have - drama, film, a huge variety of music, podcasts, youtube, etc.

And really, there shouldn't be shame in writing down simple things. When I park at the airport, I write down my spot on my hand or in a small pocket notebook I carry (I also carry a pen). Most people try to just remember it, but do not always succeed. I think it is partially a pride issue. That was me too. But you know what? Does it really matter? It's just a parking spot! Just write it down, and you don't even have to worry about remembering it. Simplify your thoughts